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Education and Employment Minister Evarist Bartolo today said that Malta’s current unemployment is at a “historic low”, quoting NSO and Eurostat statistics issued yesterday for the month of May.

In May, the number of persons registering for work stood at 5,333 compared to 7,141 in the corresponding month last year, the NSO said. Eurostat also reported that Malta has the third lowest rate of unemployment in Europe, at 5.6%, after Germany and the UK.

Addressing journalists during a visit to the World Aviation Group which hosts a customer care centre which aviation and government department services-related queries, Mr Bartolo said that this is the first time in 20 years that Malta has witnessed such a low unemployment rate.

He said that measures such as the Active Labour Market, such as the implementation of free childcare and other family-friendly measures, along with the Youth Guarantee programme all contributed to these positive results.

The largest decrease, he said was recorded among persons who had been registering for employment for over one year while the number of persons with a disability who were registering for work also decreased by 125 to 396. He also noted that youth unemployment was down from 14% to 10%. He said Malta placed third after Germany and the UK in terms of low unemployment levels among EU countries.

Mr Bartolo also highlighted that the difference in the rate of unemployment between Germany and Malta was that of 0.1%.

“We won’t stop here, we will be working to continue to achieve good results,” Mr Bartolo said.

Asked by this newsroom whether the rate of public sector employment may have contributed to the low unemployment rates, Mr Bartolo said that the rate of public sector jobs is the same as three years ago, if not lower.

Meanwhile, Employment and Training Corporation chairman Clyde Caruana said that a number of projects – which are currently being worked on by the ETC – will be announced during the next budget. He said that the projects are ECF-funded and run into the millions.

Mr Caruana said that from the information ETC had in hand, unemployment levels for the month of June will be lower than what was registered in May and the persons registering for work will be about 5,000.